There are the things we see, know and understand. Everything that exists has its context, its laws, and its “way.” Then there are things which we don’t see, and yet they seem to have an effect on the world we do see.
i am going to go out on a limb here, and say a few things about the “unseen world.”
These things are only my “gut instinct,” and there is no provable reason for them. i do not hold them to be some sort of cast in stone eternal truth. Although they are subjective opinions in the truest fashion, my life experience has provided me with all the proof i need to operate based on these principles.
i am of the opinion that there is a Deep Nature that underlies the physical world we see. Through ages past, this Deep Nature has been visualized by all human cultures in their own unique way of understanding. Because it is not visible to our senses, Deep Nature is only knowable in this somewhat mysterious way, although science has been uncovering more and more of its deep workings, and each time more deep workings are discovered, they change the rule book of what we know, and the way we see things.
This does NOT mean that the ways of the deep workings always visibly impact our physical world, but it MAY mean that all living things can interact with Deep Nature, but not in simple physical ways we are used to understanding.
i am of the opinion that Deep Nature is “aware” from the deepest levels. Like a “background” of awareness. Not awareness in the human sense, and yet it could be similar in a sense to how we are aware of our bodies.
i see this because it seems as soon as any living thing develops enough, it immediately begins to look for ways to interact with its surroundings. For my understanding, there is no way that this “reaching for senses in order to survive in the physical world” could be as ubiquitous through all living things, without some guiding principle or background awareness.
Stem cells also speak of an underlying system which IS systems, which place systems inside of systems. Whether it is an experiment, or a planned outcome, no one could possibly know.
This is not an attempt to prove the existence of these unseen things, but rather how they show themselves to us as humans, and what i have found to live in harmony with them.
We all know the parameters of the physical world, and we are taught early in life how to live within those parameters. But the unseen world is less obvious in its rules.
Why reality is set up the way it is, is also not obvious, and so humans have been trying to “read between the lines” ever since there were humans.
Early humans saw spirits in everything, and gods ruling from the sky and under the earth. They also formed stories to tell their children about how things came to be the way they are, what to do to not anger the gods, what to do to please the gods, and our relationship with the gods.
Humans feel a need for a larger power beyond them, to take care of the things that they cannot control.
Also, early humans were of the mind that what they needed to control, was the exterior world around them, and rightly so, because the world around them was full of terrifying things. As they knew and understood that things like rain and weather and food and famine were largely not under their control, they learned to pray to the gods to protect them and take care of their needs.
These were all reasonable assumptions on their part, and the constructs they built seemed to work… most of the time… and when they did not work, they had reasons for that as well. If the gods didn’t give them what they needed, they assumed the gods were angry, so they would do things to appease the gods.
These concepts seem to be deep within our brains, almost like animal instincts.
I am of the mind, that the root of these deep instincts are given to us with our “DNA package,” and form a protective layer for us, making us feel safer by following them. I do not feel that assuming this is without cause, as we see those types of instincts at play in the world around us every day. Animals, birds, fish, mammals, etc., all have instincts, and this is paired with our bodies maturing and preparing us to use those instincts to survive.
We all know that our DNA package, or body/mind, is given full and complete upon conception and birth, and that this body/mind also includes a blueprint and timeline for its time on this earth. Our understanding of our instincts grows along with our body/mind, and our environment (parents, teachers, etc.) teaches us more of how to interpret what our instincts are telling us.
Because humans live as long as we do, and pass a lot of information along from generation to generation, our societies and rules are built on our understanding and interpretation of our instincts, and the knowledge of how to use them.
One of the drawbacks with all of this, is that we humans tend to get stuck in our historical understanding, and hang onto it to obtain a sense of safety, even when new and more complete information is available.
In the last several hundred years, science has discovered better ways of understanding and interpreting the world around us.
The belief systems which humans have built tend to become dogma, which becomes resistant to change. This again has its good side as well as its not so good side.
Most of human society has been built using our belief systems to set up rules of how to treat each other, and how to survive and grow stronger. These provide us with a sense of continuity, which we use to plan strategies for life, and a sense of direction in our society.
The not so good side of this, is that we tend to stick to our habitual way of doing things, and so when the parameters of our society change, we fight to hold onto our old way of doing things, instead of progressing to a new and better way.
Religion has played a large part in casting our worldview in stone, often saying, “Our understanding is perfect and eternal, and all others are wrong.” When the fact that the religions are built on “these are the rules that please the gods, and these are the things that anger the gods” is taken into consideration, the religious leaders can use this instinctual fear to stop change.
This would likely not be too much of a problem, except that with our multicultural societies, multiple belief systems are constantly struggling for the upper hand.
Because of this, human society needs to find a new way of understanding out relationship with our outer and inner environment and build a set of laws that works with that understanding, while utilizing the social rules which have worked for us since time immemorial.
That all being said, i am of the mind that, while science has in a large part made our old concepts of God too narrow and dated, science has also taken the route of tossing the baby out with the bathwater.
Science has framed the systems we see in nature as something that has risen from chaos, or accidentally. This has happened largely because the religious world is not willing to grow with science, and has stuck with the “thunder is Thor pounding his hammer” type concepts, instead of growing and utilizing science to come to a new and better understanding of its old ways of seeing the world and its underlying invisible forces.
Reality is Dharma 